this just happened. >> i've never seen anything like this. >> this is a full-blown disaster. >> we must get it right. >> it's life. >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. >> welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. thank you for sharing this sunday with us. major breaking news this morning, the world aeft most wanted terrorist, abu bakr al-baghdadi, the leader of isis is believed to be dead after a dramatic u.s. special forces raid in northern syria. we're waiting for president trump. he's due to make a statement at the white house, a rare sunday morning state, one hour from now. this after the president teasing, quote, something very big on twitter last night. the white house not sharing any details yet about what the president plans to say, but a senior official telling cnn the president did order a raid targeting baghdadi. they say he tracked the ill

louisive terrorist inland in northwest syria. in grainy overnight video, you can hear sustained bursts of begun foo gunfire. cnn cannot confirm if these videos are from the actual raid, but they were posted noefr night as this was happen. the pentagon as of this moment has not shared any details of the operation or even confirmed there was an operation at all. but sources do tell cnn u.s. special forces commandos carried out the raid and he detonated a suicide vest as they closed in. >> cnn's nick peyton walsh and b wedeman. >> nick, what do we know about this raid and the significance, if it turns out to be true, of

getting baghdadi? >> caller: the first carve got, we are awaiting president trump's announcement. we can piece together the social media videos and the bits of information briefed, and this paints a picture of a raid into the most dangerous part of syria. an al qaeda strong hold into which it seems that special forces were inserted ubl using air power to carry them in. now, you can hear in some of the social media videos sustained heavy gunfire that suggests probably some sort of ground assault initially. you have to obviously think that u.s. forces, if they're looking for the world's most wanted man, will retrieve a body. and then subsequently a sustained series of explosions, targeting one particular area. if we look at some of the aftermath footage, the americans are trying to clean up or destroy anything that remained in that particular scene. as we understand, the suicide vest may have been used by abu bakr al-baghdadi when he knew these forces were getting close, but still the difficult task

now, bio metric identification being gbegun. how did they know he was there? this is the ultimate question people will be trying to get the answers so. the syrian kurds, the long-time part nert who have lost over 10,000 sons and daughters in the fight, their chief has stepped forward and said this was a joint intelligence operation of historic proportions, suggesting perhaps they found something out that led the americans to the world's most wanted man. after the last two or three weeks, the alliance being damaged and turkey moving toward them into syria, that's a substantial development. turkey, remember, they are a nato member, along with the united states. well, a u.s. official is saying that they did not have a role in the operation, but they were told ahead of time to make sure they could deconflict, which i imagine they have a dozen or so u.s. aircraft flying inside their air space towards this target. turkey needed to know what was going down or where the aircraft

may have been going. that's where we are at this point and of course the question will be how did baghdadi get there. waiting for confirmation that it was indeed him and what particular level of knowledge did turkey have, given the man was a matter of miles away from their southern border. turkey has always said it's been hard in the fight against isis, but this is a key moment for their relationship with washington. >> stay with us. ben, i want to go to you. you've covered this story for years. try to help our viewers understand the significance, if this is true and baghdadi is dead, the head of the snake, if you will. what is the significance and what remains for isis in items of its capabilities? >> reporter: in terms of its leadership, this is clearly a significant blow to the organization. let's keep in mind this is an organization that has affiliates in west africa and libya and egypt's peninsula and in afghanistan and the philippines, and according to a report by the inspector general of the

pentagon published just this august, they believe that between iraq and syria alone, there are anywhere between 14 and 18,000 isis fighters still on the loose. so the isis, the islamic state and iraq and syria that once controlled an area the size of great britain with as many as 12 million people under its rule, that no longer exists. abu bakr al-baghdadi who led it, he is probably dead at this point. but this is an organization that understood that after reaching its height that it would be reduced to what it is today. so clearly they've been planning for this eventuality and it's highly likely that there's already somebody in place to repla replace abu bakr al-baghdadi. so as the organization has taken a hit, but it's certainly not

out of the game altogether, john. >> we'll keep an eye on this to see if there's any official statement. i want to bring ryan brown to the conversation. we're going to hear from the president at the top of the hour, about 50 minutes from now. what do we know about the operation and what do we know about what it would take, as nick peyton walsh smartly noted, this is a place in syria where the united states is not normally operating. >> that's right, it's an extremely complex operation. you have this pocket in northwest syria near idlib, but you have the russia military and regime forces and a vat of rebel groups, many of which have ties to al qaeda and other terrorist organizations. so the u.s. must have had high confidence to go into hostile territory like that. and we're told the reason we knew he was there was through efforts of the cia. this was a cia intelligence operation, thee had some help

from the syrian kurds on the intelligence sides and it was u.s. military delta force that conducted the raid. it was a very violent situation where you saw baghdadi apparently appears to have detonated a suicide vest to prevent himself from being captured. u.s. military believes it was successful at this point in time. >> as we wait for the president, obviously any commander in chief would want to mark this moment if he is satisfied with the intelligence. he obviously had to give the go ahead for such a dangerous and discy operation and it comes at a delicate moment in the sense te president explained the last week explaining why he's right and everyone else is wrong. because there are forces on the ground, it appears the world's most wanted terrorist is dead. >> yes, we're obviously waiting to hear from the president but he predicted optimism on twitter last night, we're touting a major remark from the white house this morning.

this is a significant moment for his administration and it comes as he really has been under criticism, bipartisan criticism domestically, criticism from allies abroad about the way he has been handling u.s. troops in s syria. so this rallows him to turn the page a little bit. >> nick, if you talk to security officials, one of the things they watch for is some sort of an effort by a terrorist organization when bin laden died, everybody watched to see if al qaeda would try to project anything. with this news, i would expect western security forces to be on high alert for some sort of a sympathetic reaction. >> reporter: it may have been a reflection, you and i remember after the death of bin laden, there wasn't much of a response. people will be on a high state

of alert. they already were to some degree, completely concerned about the vacuum and the possibility that isis fighters could have escaped detention, perhaps 100 or so did, or sympathizers may have found a route to turkey in the north. many of the pro-turkish forces are described as mostly extremists. so the fluidity that's been happening as given rise to real concerns about an isis resurgence, but with a moment like this, deep concerns potentially. although i have to remind people, they have been a bit of a broken force over the past year or so. >> so that point, ben, in closing this part of the conversation, bin laden was the spiritual leader of al qaeda. baghdadi, because he has been on the run and so elusive and private, it's a different structure, is it not? >> reporter: yes, he is a leader who has never really had a very high profile. for instance, i was going with my producer back looking at the old publications, the online

publications of isis, and for instance, in one issue which was 82 pages long, there's only one mention of abu bakr al-baghdadi. so he never had a high profile. he only made one public appearance in july of 2014. unlike bin laden, who played a key role in leading the so-called arab against the afghanistan and had a high profile after that, even during the 1990s, given an interview to cnn. abu bakr al-baghdadi never gave an interview to anyone, not even isis publications. >> appreciate it. a quick break and we'll continue to cover the stories. we're trying to get more details on this remarkable u.s. forces raid in syria and we're waiting to hear directly from the president of the united states. stay with us.

president trump set to make a statement at the white house in about 48 minutes.

what we expect is the official announcement that the isis leader abu bakr al-baghdadi died in a raid carried out by u.s. special forces in northwest syria overnight. it is an odd moment, to say the least. a high risk mission carried out by u.s. special forces, even as the president says he is ending the u.s. military mission in syria. plus a rare sunday white house statement at the dawn of a week in which house democrats have a crowded witness list for their impeachment inquiry depositions. joining us with reporting and their insights this sunday, lisa layer of "the new york times," and politico. the commander in chief gave the okay for this raid. he's decided to come back from camp david on the weekend and make a statement to the american people. there was a rearview mirror of last week in syria, the president defensive at times saying you're right, i'm wrong to all of his critics, and it comes in the middle of this impeachment escalation. >> i wouldn't be surprised if we hear from the president sort

scripted, somber notes, where he follows the script for the first hour after he speaks, and then we have to wait a little bit longer to see what the president says on the campaign trail, what he says in unscripted remarks, when he's on the south lawn talking to reporters. we have already seen the president personalize the fight againstize, saying i captured isis. so you may hear him give credit to the military officers who participated in this raid this morning. but i would wait and see how he responds over the course of time and see how much he personalizes this and takes credit for this, and how much he says that he has done what his predecessors were not able to do. and whether or not that plays with voters who are watching how the president acts as commander in chief. >> and as he takes a victory lap and as he says i'm right, which he's said several times last week, just for the record here, any commander in chief deserves credit when something like this happens. it is the u.s. special forces who do the hard work and the intelligence agencies who have the building blocks to put the

special forces in that position. one of the things that will be said about this president is he will say this morning i'm the commander in chief, i did this. back when bin laden died and people were saying barack obama deserved some of the credit, then businessman donald trump said no, he didn't. >> i keep hearing about all of bin laden. the military did an incredible job and they called him and they said we have him. and he said go get him. what's he going to say, don't get him? and he gets all this credit. that's a lot of crap. >> i'm going to suspect we don't hear that this morning from the president. >> i think it's highly unlikely we'll hear that. we would like to hear sort of scripted remarks this morning and then we'll see how that unfolds at events and rallies. but this president has never been shy about taking credit for achievements with his administration. i also think that this moment provides an opportunity to look at the sort of competing forces within his foreign policy, which are that he does like showing that the u.s. can be tough, he

does -- and i'm sure we'll hear him today talking about the strength of the u.s. military, how tough it is. but at the same sometime what we've seen over the last couple of weeks and what he has taken criticism for is the other impulse, which is he really wants to get boots off the ground and is interested in trying to get out of what he calls endless wars. >> he left the impression that all troops were coming home and then the pentagon said they're going to afghanistan instead. just more yesterday, armored vehicles went in to protect the troops. but one of the arguments against the president was you left the kurds on the battlefield, so the president will have an i told you so moment today, which we saw a little bit of during the week. >> there were some political pundits who responded to turkey's offensive in syria by calling for yet another american

military intervention. i don't think so. the same people that i watched and read giving me and the united states advice were the people that i have been watching and reading for many years. they are the ones that got us into the middle east mess. but never had the vision or the courage to get us out. they just talk. >> that was the president defensive and defiant during this week at a time when he had overruled the advice of his generals that wanted to keep a military presence. today he's obviously acting on the advice of his cia and special forces command to do this raid. >> i think that's one of the most striking things about this raid, which if the accounts are true, is a success for the president. but it's a success that comes with the aid of people that he has spent much of his presidency questioning not only the kurds who had some rough treatment

from the president last week, but also the intelligence agency and the so-called deep state. and the president takes a view towards the foreign policy establishment in washington, it's the view that it's running foreign policy and engaged the u.s. in wars in places that the u.s. shouldn't be in. but the facts don't really bear that ouchlt there's approximately the same number of troops in the reason that were there when he started, and this success, which he will most certainly take credit for, comes with the help of that accomplishment and the ideals of that e establishment. >> you know it will get under his skin when they say good for you, mr. president, but we're going full speed ahead with the impeachment inquiry. you heard from the president's chief of staff, john kelly, who left several months ago saying that on the way out he told the president this. >> i told him whatever you do, don't hire a yes man, someone

that's going to tell you -- that won't tell you the truth. don't do that. because if you do, i believe you'll be impeached. >> it is remarkable to hear from general kelly so candidly. the president put out a rare statement yesterday saying that conversation never happened. as press secretary denigrating general kelly who was a hero. i worked with john kelly and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president. you have people who were loyal to the president working this close to the president coming out and questioning the president's judgment, that's stunning. >> i do think with kelly there's a little bit of history because some of the most critical parts of the mueller report happened under his watch. but when it comes to this raid, i think it is very important on the hill because republicans have really struggled to defend trump against the impeachment

process, and democrats are moving full steam ahead like you said. but republicans have this talking point to point to and say, look, our president did this. this is a huge win for him and us and u.s. and it kind of can help them shift the narrative in a way that they haven't in the last couple of weeks. >> up next, we'll come to the details of the impeachment inquiry and a look at the giant gap emerging between what the white house says and what the key witnesses swear under oath. we're oscar mayer deli fresh and you may know us from...

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the impeachment inquiry consumed washington this week, including rare weekend work as house democrats questioned a top state department official involved in ukraine policy. now, democrats say the evidence tilted heavily against the president in recent days and the white house response shifted as several of the president's key arguments were undermined. >> that call is a very terrific call. it's congenial, there was no pressure, there was no anything. and you know it and so do i, and so does everybody else. >> no pressure, the president says. but cnn reporting contradicts that. two weeks before taking office, meaning before the president's

july call, ukraine's new president and his team discussed pressure from mr. trump and from his personal attorney, rudy giuliani, and there's this. >> the text message that i saw from ambassador sondland, who is highly respected, was there's no quid pro quo, and there isn't. >> but the administration's top envoy in ukraine told congress, quote, everything ukraine wanted, including military aid and a white house visit, hinged on announcing the investigations demanded by the president and by rudy giuliani. and president also re-tweeted the assertion that u krant didn't know u.s. military aid was being held up. but "the new york times" reports ukraine did know the aid had been held up. one more. >> i'm only interested in corruption. i don't care about politics.

i don't care about biden's politics. and if you look and you read our constitution and many other things, i have an obligation to look at corruption. i have an actual obligation and a duty. >> that only interested in corruption line, though, undermined by a "washington post" report that as the president was pushing ukraine to investigate the bidens, his administration tried to cut billions from anti-corruption programs in ukraine and elsewhere. the president's allies in congress did heed his calls for help this past week, including storming into a inquiry room, but their complaints are almost always about the process, not an embrace of the president's conduct. >> the house intelligence committee is using its time and resources to run a sham impeachment inquiry in secret. >> house democrats are bypassing constitutional norms and basic standards of due process with their impeachment obsession. >> there's no due process for the accused, but instead there's

a secret process somewhere behind closed doors. >> maybe in the soviet union this kind of thing is commonplace. this shouldn't be happening in the united states of america. >> striking in a week in which a lot of what the president has said and the administration has held up as their proof that he did nothing wrong was shattered by the testimony and by other reporting, when the republicans come out and they did heed the president's call. the president wanted more cover, if you will. they're not saying the president didn't do anything wrong. they're saying the democrats are running a process we don't like. >> i mean, in washington if you're working on process, you're losing, i'm not sure that quite implies here because i think the impeachment process is confusing and hard to follow. these kinds of arguments could get traction. but it certainly shows that republicans at this moment are not operating from their strongest position and you're seeing that from the white house, too. all the reports have been that they're starting to get nervous and think about forming a team. bringing in a lawyer with some

impeachment expertise. one could argue that should have happened several weeks ago, that a series of mistakes were made during this period in which the president was really operating based on his own gut instinct in a pretty complicated and fairly legal and political process. but that's where we are at the end of this week. >> and at the end of this week, which if you go back just a week or two, the administration had said, no, hell no, when the democrats say we're going to bring in witnesses and turn over documents. they're still slow to turn over documents. we can show you some of the officials that have gone in. the president said i don't want any people cooperating. senior state department officials, and diplomats and senior security council officials current and past all going up because they've issued subpoenas. and the officials essentially denying the president saying i got a subpoena, i will cooperate. >> and you can see why they did not want these people to testify. they've testified to information that has undercut directly the president's denials that he did

anything wrong. the president is saying this call was perfect, the whistle-blower's account of the call is misinformation. they know the whistle-blower's account of the call has been backed up by the skand the actu transcript of the call that was put out, so you don't see many republicans saying that. the process argument is a short-term argument. at some point this is all going to come out into light and the republicans are going to have to deal with the substance. >> and what we're hearing from republicans is a frustration with where to take their argument. so part of the reason that they're focused so much on process is a lot of them don't feel like they're getting clear signals from the white house in how to argue this. it gets back to lisa's part about the white house has in recent days been trying to figure out should they bring in extra people or legal, they have been doing more meetings trying

to work on messaging. lindsay graham, for example, has been very vocal about his frustration with the way the white house has been doing this. >> if the president says no quid pro quo and then especially on the house side where his allies are more safer districts and they go out and say no quid pro quo and then the testimony undermines them. so that's why they're complaining about the process. because if they follow the president's lead, they will find themselves undermined by the facts. my question is will they follow the president's lead in attacking the witnesses. bill taylor has been very well liked across democratic and republican investigations as someone who is detail oriented and carries out the mission, he's loyal, a patriot, he's a vietnam veteran. the president says, no, he's this. >> here's the problem. he's a never-trumper and his lawyer is a never-trumper, and the other problem is -- hey, everybody makes mistakes.

mike pompeo, everybody makes mistakes. he's a never-trumper. his lawyer is the head of the never-trumpers. they're a dying breed but they're still there. >> it was mike pompeo who asked mr. taylor to come out of retirement. nobody thinks of bill taylor was political at all. my question is will republicans on capitol hill get into the character assassination or will they stick to the process? they've been hesitant to attack folks like bill taylor and when you ask them about it, they go back to the process argument. but i will say on friday that argument was significantly undercut with the federal ruling in washington related to the mueller grand jury material where the judge said the house does not have to vote to be an impeachment inquiry. if speaker nancy pelosi says they are, they are. so republicans have been arguing the opposite, so it will be interesting to see how they counteract that when they come back tomorrow. >> there's also a sense that the white house felt that executive

privilege pertained much more strongly to people who are not actually working for the president. the people who are testifying will are state department civil servants, the kind of civil servants that president trump has spent much of the last two years attacking and sort of trashing in a lot of different ways. and now they're getting their moment where the deep state gets to fight back. and that executive privilege, which bars people working for the president potentially from testifying, doesn't really apply to people who are part of the civil servants. >> they brought in phil reeker yesterday and john bolton now in conversations, it's going to be hard for the president to label those people the deep state. even if they're just giving factual testimony about phone calls. even if they just go up and give factual information that supports other information about when things happened, who was on the call and what was said, it's going to be hard to call them the deep state. up next, the democratic divide over how long it should take and what the articles of impeachment

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the impeachment inquiry was paused friday for the funeral of democratic congressman elijah cummings. chairman cummings was a leading voice in the impeachment debate and two former presidents took clear aim at the current president. >> he knew that without the constitution the laws that were passed under it, the rights that were guaranteed by and the abuses it was designed to prevent, without that

constitution he would not have been in congress. >> there's nothing weak about kindness and compassion. there's nothing weak about looking out for others. you're not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect. >> there was more critical testimony this week from more trump national security officials involved in the ukraine decisions. all will be behind closed doors, but democrats are working on the next step, drafting articles of impeachment and public hearings. >> everybody is going to have public testimony. they're going to see public testimony. they'll be able to read or to hear all of the testimony that has been given and will be given. >> when is the hard part. you wrote about this the other day as the week closed down. democratic leaders still view the end of 2019 as a rough deadline to complete the impeachment process, but the unexpected testimony that investigators have received in private from witnesses willing to defy the white house efforts to silence them has left

lawmakers reluctant to stanch the flow and possibly miss critical details. how do they find the sweet spot? that's what we're trying to figure out. there is no grand plan. speaker pelosi knows she wants to somehow wrap this up by the end of the year, but they don't know when they'll take it public or how they'll do it. what kind of hearings or who will testify, they don't even have a list of that yet. so they're still in very early discussions and meanwhile, lawmakers are looking at the clock and saying we're entering november. if you want to wrap this up by the end of december, we need to get going. >> and they have other work that they have to do as well. they have to fund the government. the president has shown that he's willing to shut down the government if he doesn't get what he likes and that could dominate the news and make it harder their them to push the impeachment public hearings and that could be hard if the government is shut down and there's all these legal fights on whether to fund the president's border wall. so they have a lot of things that they have to juggle at once. this is an unorthodox president who is not going to respond to

impeachment the way a normal president does. we have already seen some of that. democrats are going to have to be on their toes to figure out how they're going to put this process forward if they're going to meet their deadline. >> and the closer you get to the election year, 2020, which is every second we're having this conversation we're getting closer, the more republicans will say leave this to the voters. even republicans who don't want to rush out and defend the president will say let's leave this to the voters in november. to nancy pelosi, part of her challenge at the speaker is to say we don't want to do this, but we have to. >> nobody comes to congress to impeach a president. you come about the future that our children, or about issues, whether it's education, climate, you name it. so as we go forward with this, we want to do it in the most solemn, prayerful way that has a healing effect on our country. >> a healing effect on our country in an incredibly polarized environment to begin with. wishful thinking. i get the point she's trying to

make, no disrespect intended. but really? >> yeah, it feels a little hard to believe. also given the fact that there is a very active democratic presidential primary going on and this process, especially even if they meet the timeline of getting it done by the end of the year, then it moves to the senate and mitch mcconnell has said that he will hold some kind of trial, so it's likely to run into the start, if not well into the democratic presidential primaries. so you'll have this whole series of candidates trying to figure out how to leverage impeachment to their greatest benefit, and you suspect that that's not going to be in a way that's healing. >> we'll watch as it plays out. a lot of pressure on the republicans, but also on the democrats as this process plays out. reminder, we're waiting to hear from the president at the top of the hour about the apparent death of the world's most wanted terrorist. up next, iowa, just 99 days away from their first vote. ♪

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the first official votes of the 2020 campaign are now 99 days away. that would be the iowa caucuses. we saw one national poll this week with joe biden on top, another had elizabeth warren in the lead. national polls matter a lot less once the states start voting and iowa tends to shake things up, especially for the democrats. let's look at the history. again, 99 days until the 99 counties of iowa start to vote. if you look for the democrats, al gore, john kerry, barack obama, hillary clinton, what do

they have in common? they won contested iowa caucuses and they went on to beat the nominee. iowa tends to pick the winner for the democrats. for the democrats, it has mattered. we'll see if it does in 2020. let's look at a little bit of what's happening in the state of iowa. these are the top candidates qualified for the next debate, and their staffing levels in iowa. you see there 100 plus for these five candidates right here fighting it out on the ground in iowa. tv ad spending, this is money spent so far and booked so far through the february caucuses, tom steyer has the most money spent there. you see vice president biden, warren, buttigieg and sanders in

tv spending so far. the polls have been closer. joe biden started the race as a clear front-runner, now he's in the top pack. he says, sure, i think i can win iowa, but if i don't, there are other places to go. >> i plan to win in iowa. i'm working like hell to win iowa and i'm going to make the best case i can. particularly in early states. iowa is important, so is new hampshire, and so is south carolina and so in nevada. but right on the heels of all of that, there's super tuesday. and there's states in super tuesday that look like they're particularly favorable to me, but that could change, too. >> we should book joe biden for the panel. it is interesting, as a guy who is the former vice president, will be treated differently in terms of stature as a candidate, can he afford to lose early on, especially as we know he's struggling with money at the moment? >> and he's clearly trying to

manage expectations in this interview and others talking about how there's a number of different paths. but if you lose iowa and new hampshire, you know, you then are moving into the next states behind the pack and another person can capture momentum with those states. that's the big thing with iowa. a win there, especially if it's a surprise win, really can boost somebody and create problems for someone else. >> if he haunt win iowa, he has to hope that if somebody wins both, then big moment. >> i also think iowa is a place that can prove viability for other parts of the country. it is whiter and a little bit older than the rest of the primary electorate. so pete buttigieg, who is of course guay, that can reassure people in other parts of the country, because they'll say it is a generally midwestern place,

if they'll vote for this person, then that person can win. >> the three tickets out of iowa idea, which is someone else could surprise us a. so if someone else bates expectations, like klobuchar or buttigieg does better than expected, that can sort of scramble the race. >> and one of the themes as we get into the final 99 days there is that joe biden's team has acknowledged, he said repeatedly i will not sake help from a super pac. if you look at the donors that have maxed out, 38% of biden's primary donors can't give him any more money. if you look at warren and sanders who raise more in small online contributions, they've got a lot of room to grow. so he needs this super pac which bernie sanders says the horrible. >> i do not think a super pac is healthy for an american democracy, and i think if you

check the record, joe has said something similar. when billionaires and wealthy people contribute, they're not doing so out of the goodness of their heart, they want something. and that is one of the great problems in american society. >> can that argument sell? i've always been one for years that the money arguments don't matter as much to voters, but it seems that that argument does seem to have sway, especially when you see sanders and warren with grass roots contributions. >> i think it's more important than we've seen in any prior election. biden is weighing the pros and cons. he has less cash on hand than some second tier candidates and money matters more than a lot of other things. so he says i'll take the hits now but it will probably help me in the long run. i think that's the calculation he's making. >> when koe come back, we'll hear from the president of the united states. the president, we're told, expected to announce the death of one of the world aefs most wanted terrorists. > live pictur

diplomatic reception room at white house and you saw a presidential aide putting papers on the podium and the president moments away from addressing the american people and expected to announce u.s. special forces in northern forces conducted a raid that resulted in the deng of abu bakr al baghdadi and u.s. special forces very difficult mission in a part of syria where the united states is not normally operating so a moment for the commander-in-chief to thank the troops andp to take credit. >> i expect him to do both of those things and say he was proud of what the troops were

able to do in northwest syria and take credit for his overall policy and spent time saying we defeated isis and we don't need to be the middle east and i select him to take a message this morning. >> and we're learning that all of the u.s. special forces who are on the mission were able to get out safely as well. which is great news as we wait to hear from the president of the united states. >> i think we're going to hear, as toluse said, the presence of other troops and this is a significant moment for him and a long held target of the u.s. and a key figure they've been trying to take so this is a foment for him to take a victory lap. >> and we're told special forces conducted the raid but al baghdadi detonated himself as the forces were closing in on him. the president of the united states moments away. thanks for joining us on this

busy sunday morning. jake tapper picks up our coverage next with "state of the union." stay with us. there's a power in listening; it's what gives audible members an edge. it opens our minds, changes our perspective,

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washington, welcome to a special two-hour he had is of "state of the union." we have a lot of news. right now we're waiting for president trump to make an announcement as isis leader abu bakr al-baghdadi is believed to have been killed during a raid conducted by the u.s. military. that is according to a senior u.s. defense official and a source familiar with the operation. both of them said that bagdadi appears to have detonated a suicide vest during the raid. the apparent death of the leader of isis is after weeks of criticism of president trump over the decision to pull u.s. service members from the syria northern border and at any moment we'll hear directly from

president trump who previewed his remarks by tweeting overnight that something very big has happened, unquote. we're covering the death of the taste leader of isis from every angle from the pentagon to the white house to the middle east. let's begin with pentagon reporter ryan browne. what raw learning about the operation and how it came about? >> reporter: we're told this is a very complex operation that came about from intelligence obtained and collected by the cia and that intelligence helped lead to a u.s. military raid led by delta force we're being told, the elite special forces deep into northwest syria which is hostile territory and there are actors and extremist groups and the russian and regime military has a presence far from where theut military typically operated so they have to have high confidence that al baghdadi was at the location to verify the raid.

al baghdadi killed himself when encountering the forces to a evade capture and the u.s. tried to capture high value targets and detonating the force and united states forces on the began efforts to identify this is the targts they sought. and they are highly confident that he was, in fact, killed in this operation. >> ryan browne thank you so much. let's go to iraq where we find international correspondent nick paton walsh in erbil. this is a big blow to isis. >> reporter: absolutely. this is a man who offered the ideology and behind the way they piped down social media, the brutal gory images of violence, of suffering, of execution of western hostages over times and hundreds of iraqi army recruits. he honed their skills of spreading around the world the idea anybody with a twisted view of the world could join isis

jihad and possibly with his death find the end of a chapter. but no mistake, something does still continue. we don't know what it is but we know that isis was fractured as an ideology and franchise and unlikely that one man's death will end from a stretch from philippines through russia and to the streets of european capitals but an interesting set of questions that the commander-in-chief will end up answering about how this raid came about. it was literally miles away from the southern turkish border, an area where many did not imagine abu bakr al-baghdadi, the leader of isis, would look for shelter. this is where al qaeda have the biggest strong hold, a place where western intelligence chiefs are concerned about the next wave of jihad but who led them to that particular location. we understand from u.s. officials turkey was told this operation was happening perhaps already underway